News in brief - Feb. 7, 2005

Recalculating obesity's toll - FDA approves longer-lasting meningitis vaccine - HHS: Collaboration key to getting medical advances to patients quickly - Radon risk warning issued

Recalculating obesity's toll

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recalculated its estimate of the number of people who die each year from poor diet and physical inactivity and lowered its previous estimate of 400,000 to about 365,000 deaths per year.

CDC experts admitted last November that they had made a computational error in the 400,000 figure for an article on causes of death that appeared in the March 10, 2004, Journal of the American Medical Association.

Although the numbers may have been off, the conclusions are the same, said CDC researchers in a letter to the editor in the Jan. 19 JAMA. "Tobacco use and poor diet and physical inactivity contributed to the largest number of deaths, and the number of deaths related to poor diet and physical inactivity is increasing," they wrote.

They also acknowledged the difficulty in assessing the health burden of poor diet and lack of physical activity and noted that they are trying to develop, along with the Institute of Medicine, a better method of calculating these burdens with an eye toward guiding public policy to better target interventions.

FDA approves longer-lasting meningitis vaccine

The Food and Drug Administration in January approved the first conjugate vaccine against the bacteria that causes meningococcal infection.

Menactra, which is manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur, protects against the same four serogroups of Neisseria meningitidis as currently available vaccines, but the conjugate technology is expected to provide longerprotection.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices currently recommends meningitis vaccine only for those who have been exposed to the bacteria or who are at particularly high risk of developing significant disease. The committee is expected to issue recommendations this month that take this new vaccine into account.

The vaccine is approved for those ages 11 to 55. Sanofi intends to apply for approval for use in those younger than 11 early this year.

HHS: Collaboration key to getting medical advances to patients quickly

The Dept. of Health and Human Services should improve cooperation with other federal agencies that play a role in medical technology development to increase the speed at which innovations in the lab make it to patients, according to a report issued in January by an HHS task force studying the issue.

"When it comes to making life-saving technology, drugs, and devices available to patients, there's no time to waste," said then HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. "So, we took a hard look at how we can better foster the innovation and research needed to bring new technologies and treatments forward quickly."

The report advocates that the agency create a forum for investigators and manufacturers to communicate with HHS, continue to support the development of a standard format for electronic clinical trial data, and work toward improving collaboration between the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Additional efforts should be made to identify knowledge gaps among personnel working on technology transfer issues.

Scientists, government agencies and medical societies have long been debating ways to improve the transformation of good bench science into good medicine. Most recently, the American Medical Association's Board of Trustees issued a report on the subject in June 2004.

Radon risk warning issued

U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, MD, issued a national health advisory on Jan. 13 regarding the dangers of breathing indoor radon. The advisory urges Americans to prevent this silent radioactive gas from seeping into their homes and buildings at dangerous levels.

"Indoor radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, and breathing it over prolonged periods can present a significant health risk to families all over the country," said Dr. Carmona. More than 20,000 Americans die of radon-related lung cancer every year, according to the health advisory.

"Radon can be detected with a simple test and fixed through well-established venting techniques," he noted. Dr. Carmona recommended testing homes for radon every two years and retesting when structural changes are made.

The Environmental Protection Agency has also joined in promoting the advice and estimates that one in every 15 homes nationwide has a radon level at or above the recommended radon action level of 4 picocuries per liter of air.